“Human beings are born to make impossible possible. So if you say it cannot be done, I get very excited.”
Born in Bangladesh in 1940, Professor Muhammad Yunus grew up in a village where poverty and hunger were a part of life. Yunus was determined to change this. If only for one person.
Driven by the struggles within his community he chose to study economics, earning a master’s degree and eventually becoming a teacher before being offered a scholarship to study in the US. Whilst there he was deeply impacted by the way social injustices were being challenged at the time and in 1971, when Bangladesh became an independent country, he decided to move back to help try and improve things.
What he expected to see was progress. Instead, he was faced with even more challenges as loan sharks preyed on the poor. Witnessing this stark reality, Yunus felt compelled to take action and started lending money from his own pocket to those most in need. This initial act of compassion laid the foundation for what would later become his legacy. He envisioned a world where access to financial resources was not a privilege but a fundamental right, and in 1983 he set up his first bank for the poor, Grameen Bank, meaning ‘Village Bank’. Today this has reached all 80,000 villages in Bangladesh and has enhanced the lives of millions typically ignored by traditional banks.
In 2006, Yunus was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work in microfinance. His concept of ‘social businesses’ has inspired countless individuals and organisations worldwide to address some of the world’s most challenging problems through innovative solutions.
But you don’t have to help millions to be successful. Even helping just one person is success and this is something Yunus emphasises. We as humans may have limited time on this planet, but we have unlimited capacity. Use it to create a better civilisation built on empathy and sharing. Step by step, little by little, it can be done.
Muhammad Yunus – video transcript
Nothing is beyond human capacity. Human beings are born to make impossible possible. So if you say it cannot be done, I get very excited. That's what I'm supposed to do.
I was born in a village in Bangladesh. I always felt that the country is a poor country. Hunger is a part of the life. We have to go miles to find a school. Many people will have no change of clothes. Life is very tough. As we grow up, we are always asking the question, what next? How to improve the condition of the poor people. That's why I thought I should study economics.
I did my master's degree and then became a teacher. Then I was given a scholarship to go to United States. It was kind of a period of quick transformation. The assassination of Martin Luther King, assassination of Bobby Kennedy, demonstrating against Vietnam War. So this combination of all this such as defiance and challenging the system had a lot of impact on me.
In 1971 and after a long conflict with Pakistan, we became an independent country. So at that point, I decided I should go back and see what can be done in an independent country. But the situation started deteriorating instead of improving, so all your dreams turn into nightmares. And then suddenly, you realise that that's not the kind of independence we are looking for. So that's kind of a raw form of idea that something to be done. I never thought I'll solve the problem of poverty, but I can do something. Why don't I go and see if I can do something for one person?
So I would go to the village every day and try to find a person that I can be useful to him or her. I got confronted with this problem of loan sharking in the village. People lending tiny money and grabbing everything the other person has. And I was thinking, "what a shame that people have to suffer for this because they don't have enough". It's a small amount of money to take care of their needs and no bank can help them, no bank comes anywhere near them. And I said, "My God, this is terrible and I can do something about it." So one idea came that why don't I lend the money myself? That's the easiest way to do that; then they don't have to go to loan shark. See, I see a problem, I try to solve that problem.
I started taking money out of my pocket and giving money to the people in the village. I was not thinking I will create a bank, that was far removed from my idea. I was just trying to protect one person and the next person and people were very happy about that. And it became very popular.
Crisis came when I was running out of my money. So how do we continue? Then the question of creating an institution which can run by itself came to my mind. So I tried many ways, tried to pursue at the banks. Banks said, "No, it's impossible to lend money to poor people." Finally, I thought, why don't I create a little bank for the poor people? After lots of trial and error with us, finally, finance ministry agreed and in 1983, we created the bank, named it 'Grameen Bank', meaning Village Bank. We defined it by saying it's a non-dividend company to solve human problems without any intention of making money for yourself. We had a grand ambition to have 500 branches. Gradually went way beyond 500. Right now we have 2,600 branches all over the country reaching out to all the 80,000 villages of Bangladesh with over 9 million borrowers.
Businesses can be run this way; it doesn't have to be always making money. If you want to fulfill your selfless dimension, then you create another kind of business, 'social business' where you don't want to make money for yourself, you want to solve the problems of the world.
Anybody can be successful, that's the point. It doesn't need a special person to do that. You can be successful because you impacted a million people, but you can be successful with one person. That's a success, too. Human being is packed with unlimited capacity. If I don't use this, it'll be all wasted. It'll be gone, finish, because I'll be here for a very short period. So that is my chance, this is me.
Make a list of all the impossible things. Very few things are left. So we should not set aside something because this is impossible. Rather, we should get excited that still there's something left.
The present civilisation is a greed-based civilisation and greed-based civilisation will destroy us. We have to build a new civilisation, a civilisation which will be based on empathy, sharing rather than grabbing. Not servitude, not to work for somebody and make a living. Making a living is a very small ambition for a human being. That may be the ambition of all other animals. They live just to eat and eat to live. Human beings are different because they have a greater mission. How to take care of everybody else, how to take care of the whole planet itself. Step by step, we are making things happen which was thought impossible and that's our journey.
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Muhammad Yunus became the founder of Grameen Bank and a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
He is widely credited with pioneering microfinance and enhancing the lives of millions of people typically ignored by traditional banks.
His concept of ‘social businesses’, has inspired entrepreneurs around the world to develop business models focussed on helping solve some of the world’s most challenging problems.
